Pirate Wires - Palmer Luckey on Arsenal-1, Trump, US Manufacturing, Tariffs, & Heretical Thoughts

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

Palmer Luckey Interview: Arsenal-1, US Manufacturing, Tariffs Heretical Thoughts & The Election Today we have a special episode of the pod. The legendary Palmer Luckey returns to the pod! Palmer is the Founder of Anduril and the inventor of Oculus. In this conversation, Mike and Palmer discuss the astronauts stuck in space, government contracts, building Arsenal-1, dealing with the media, supporting Trump, heretical thoughts, and the world that Palmer would like to leave for his grandchildren.  Featuring Mike Solana & Palmer Luckey Sign Up To Pirate Wires For Free! https://piratewires.co/free_newsletter Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Palmer Twitter: https://x.com/PalmerLuckey TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Welcome Back To The Pod Palmer Luckey!  2:30 - Boeing Starliner Astronauts Stuck In Space 10:00 - Government Defense Contracts 17:30 - $1.5B Raise For Anduril - Arsenal-1 Announcement - Anduril Expansion 26:25 - US Manufacturing Problems 31:20 - Tariffs - Why Palmer Approves Of Them 35:50 - Google Protests / Tech Defense Vibe Shift 39:05 - Supporting Trump 8 Years Ago vs. Now 42:20 - Heretical Thoughts Today 59:50 - Palmer Dealing With The Media - Why He Is Now Beloved 1:11:13 - Chromatic - How Palmer Is Reviving The GameBoy and Physical Video Games 1:19:00 - The Removal Of History On The Internet - Mandela Effect 1:25:20 - The Necessity Of Having Children 1:27:00 - The World That Palmer Wants To Build For His Grandchildren 1:29:45 - Thanks For Watching! Like & Subscribe #podcast #palmerluckey #technology #politics #culture

I think that I'm trying to take advantage of this moment in time where people seem to broadly understand that national security is important and that even if you don't like me, you can at least recognize that I'm doing things that are good for the United States. She's actually a jihadist journalist. America would run out of weapons in about three weeks. That seems pretty shocking. I'm very bitter about it. Many of those same people are the people who are literally calling for me to be fired.

Homer Watch, where they offered a bounty to anyone who could track me down. We beat Lockheed and Boeing on the collaborative combat aircraft selection. You can do it this way. Oh, here's one. That's pretty heretical. What's up, guys? We have a special episode of the podcast today with the legendary Palmer Luckey, a friend of the pod. He's been on before. I'm excited to have him back on today.

He's the founder of Anderle, of course, and the inventor of Oculus Rift. But Palmer, welcome to the pod. Of course, welcome to have me. It feels a little weird to be so old that I'm the legendary Palmer Luckey. I got a foot in the grave, only a beat to go before I pass into legend and myth. Yeah, you're going to get a biopic soon. Oh man. You know, I, people are always reaching out to me about that. And I've always told them that the second that you get a biopic, your career inevitably goes downhill. You get your biopic at the peak of your career or, or after you're irrelevant. And I, I mean, look at Justin Bieber, you know, he did a Justin

Bieber, never say never. And it was, I, it was all downhill from there. That's actually, I have, I mean, we have a, we got a bunch of media questions in here eventually to get to, we've got like a packed episodes. I want to just get to it. We've got Arsenal that we have to talk about. I want to talk about manufacturing generally. We're going to talk about, um, your game boy that you have invented. Um, we talked a little bit about it. Uh, that's summit that we were at. I want to get back into that and Pokemon, as well as the media, of course. But first, at the very top, dude, we have two astronauts stuck in space at the moment. So we've had two astronauts stuck in space for about two

months. This is the Boeing Starliner, the company responsible for the mission delay, failure, I don't even know what to call it at this point. They are unable to bring the astronauts home. Now, these guys have been, since being awarded their contract with government, SpaceX has flown countless missions while Boeing's deliverables have been delayed for years and now whatever this is. Like SpaceX, you guys are also competing with huge incumbents for government contracts. I'm wondering, what is your take on the astronauts just generally? And then I want to talk about funding from these incumbents. I'm wondering how much funding are the incumbents securing today, right now? Well, I think it's helpful to look at it from two perspectives.

One is the lens through which I see everything. How would the press handle this if the tables were turned? And of course, like we can know, it'd be like Elon Musk smokes a joint while astronauts career goes up in smokes. It'd be crazy. And so I can't help but feel like it's interesting to see not just the government, but also the entire media apparatus more or less running an interference campaign for, oh, I don't know if you've seen these stories, like, oh, it's an unexpected boon for the other teams on the ISS having extra hands to help with their experiments. And oh, the unexpected benefits of while that we're learning from having more people than beds on the ISS right now. And you'd never see that the other way around. So, but we can kind of move past that. The second bit is- Well, I just want to note, if it were Elon, listen, I mean, we follow this stuff pretty closely in the media. It would be straight up 24 seven coverage about how Elon Musk's ego specifically stranded two astronauts in space.

We would have 24 hour coverage. It would be constant headlines. I mean, I remember when I gave $9,000 to this anti-Clinton group, uh, Gizmodo launched a week, a weekly piece called Palmer watch where they offered a bounty to anyone who could track me down regarding this small political contribution. And they ran that from September of 2016 until February of 2017. And I'm not a celebrity at all. Like, I mean, I think you have 24-7. I think you'd have dedicated pieces. You'd have people on the hashtag space stranding beat. Like it would be, they'd be interviewing the families of the people. They'd be talking to people. Oh yeah, Rick always was a little claustrophobic. always was a little claustrophobic. And he, one time I was late to pick him up for a ride and he had a breakdown and in college. And I bet, I bet that's coming back to him now because of Elon Musk. Yeah. I mean, do you think that the Elon Musk, we have, I do want to talk about the funding of it and the contract situation, but, but do you think that the fact that Elon Musk is potentially the

only lifeline for these guys. The reason that the Biden administration is dragging his feet. It seems like giving Elon a huge victory right now in the middle of an election would be pretty, I don't know, politically, I don't know if it would be damaging to Biden, but it would certainly not be helpful. So that's actually the second lens I was going to say. The first is the media lens. The second is the government perspective lens. And so there's kind of a straw man and a steel man version of this. I think it's... If you kind of want to make the steel man case for why the government should be waiting and hoping that Starliner works and that all this goes, it's that they want more competition.

They want more than one provider. And yes, they would love it if the two providers competing were both competent. They would love it if there were three providers that were competent. And in a world where there's SpaceX, another SpaceX, and another SpaceX, and Boeing, Boeing obviously would not be getting the benefit of the doubt the way that they are. But as of right now, they do only have two choices. And so the steel man version of this is the government is doing everything they can to not turn this into a monopoly. But of course, the real angle, I think, is actually pretty close to what you're talking about. It would be such a loss politically to send them home on not just a SpaceX-built rocket, a non-union rocket. Remember when Biden invited all of the electric vehicle companies to the EV summit at the White

House, and he brought Mary Barra on stage, and he said, I just want to say to everyone that you have electrified the entire automotive industry. You electrified the entire automobile industry. I'm serious. You led and it matters. In that year, GM had shipped 13 electric cars. I don't mean 13 models. I mean, 13 cars. They had just launched their first electric vehicle

in that year, the new Hummer EV. To be clear, I like GM and I really like GM Defense. Those are really great guys there. I love that they have a defense division compared to most of the other car companies that have not built anything for the military specifically since World War II. But it was crazy to watch that nonsense. And we all know what the answer was. Union companies were allowed to come to the White House and union companies were boosted

as electrifying the automotive industry. Meanwhile, the guy who outsold every other company there by a factor of 10, even put together, was snubbed. And the rocket thing is just that on steroids. A non-union rocket bringing home our brave astronauts is not a politically viable event in an election season. I mean, this is what happens when you buy Twitter, I think, is really what we're... That's the sort of maybe giant, I would say elephant, bird in the room, but he got rid of the bird. I mean,

giant, I would say elephant, bird in the room, but he got rid of the bird. I mean, that's what this is. This man took over the speech platform. He thus, to be maybe fair to them, he sort of, Elon injected himself into politics in a way that probably no entrepreneur in my lifetime has done and just totally politicized himself in a way that's, yeah, it's going to be, that's going to come up every time we have to deal with SpaceX. It is, it is, it is extraordinary. I never would have, I never would have bet on that either. Like it's, it's not because it's, it's like, it's brave, but also I'm, I'll just be candid. I think it's definitely negative for his businesses, which makes me feel like he must be doing it because he really does believe that it's good for humanity, keeps the window from civilization open. There's no rational business explanation for why he would do any of this. Well, I mean, you could make a business argument. You could say that

if America collapses, it's bad for business. Okay. Yeah. The ultimate business argument, civilization must go on or I can't make money. That's pretty good. But like a specific one, like I feel like even if someone hates Elon, they should be able to recognize he is not doing this because he's just like, you know, bowing to pressure or doing what people want. Like he is clearly doing what he thinks is right.

How much funding are these guys, the huge incumbents? That's my two-part question here. First, how much funding are the gigantic incumbents getting in comparison with smaller players? Let's talk about defense specifically, less than SpaceX. Well, they're getting hundreds of billions of dollars and they're getting the lion's share of the money.

I mean, what is it? It's like 80% of major weapons contracts go to one of five companies. 30% of major weapons contracts have a single bidder, meaning only one company even shows up to say they'll do it for any price. And the defense industry is really about as bad as it gets on that front.

The interesting thing about Anderle is that we're going into a lot of these areas and we are doing things for a 10th of the price of the incumbents and we're using our own money to develop these capabilities so that the taxpayer is not on the hook when it doesn't work.

They're only buying it if it actually works and we actually make it work. That's not a business model that we've used to build our defense industry. And something I've been pushing with politicians over the last few years, they've kind of explained to me the red pill of, look, Palmer, we know there's lots of problems. We know the model's bad, but we've built an entire military around that model and around these companies. And if you just rug pull these guys and force and say, oh, you only get money if you're good. You only get money if it works. You will just put them out of business. They will cease to exist. And so it's kind of this strange situation where they know there's a problem, but they can't really do anything about it because they know that the downstream effects

of... I think we can agree on this. Destroying the US military and our ability to fight around the world probably has more negative impact than hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful spending every year, as crazy as that is. And so the thing that I've been pushing to them is, guys, you need to learn from the Democrats. The Democrats have done a really good job with their issues like climate policy or green energy

of saying, hey, we know we can't get what we want now, but here's our vision for 50 years in the future. You know, someday, at some distant future, we're going to have no oil and everything is going to be green and gas stoves are going to be banned and you're going to eat the bugs and you're not going to own anything

and you're going to love it. And you can take issue with those policy positions, but they're very clear about this future that's very far out and it gets people enthused. They feel, young people feel like, well, at least the Democrats have this vision. The Republicans are just like reactive day-to-day playing politics. What I tell the Republicans is you guys need to put a stake in the ground and say, here's our vision for what defense spending is like 50 years in the future. Maybe you can't cut them off today, but you could say, you know what? My vision is 50 years from now, there won't be cost plus contracts. 50 years from now, if you fail to deliver, you don't get paid. My vision is that in 25 years, every company

is going to put at least as much into R&D as the government does on any given program. And at least then I would feel like there's a path to things being solved. And the good news is actually people really like this idea. The last time I talked about it with somebody, they called their assistant to send somebody to take notes. And that was nice. Well, I would love to see it because it's not just defense. You love to see notes. And that was nice. Well, I would love to see it. Because it's not just defense. You love to see it. That's the Republican Party in general on every single issue. I was talking about this on a Libertarian podcast not so long ago, where they were arguing that, oh, there is a sort of right-wing philosophy on education or whatever. And it's not really, because fundamentally,

a lot of these people don't even believe in the concept. So they're the party of no. The Democrats are the party of yes to everything. And you can only lose that way. And I think also you see there's no ability to kind of think two steps ahead. The Democrats are great at this one-two punch. You pass this bill that does one thing, and then you use it to create some other unseen consequence that was downstream of that. Like, we're going to pass this law that's to get rid of smog in the Los Angeles basin. Just kidding. It means we can

take over all of the power plants 50 years later. They're great at that one-two punch. The Republicans generally are not thinking that way because they don't think that there should be any laws for anything anyway. They don't want regulation. And so naturally, I've had people say, Palmer, how can the Republicans take control of the education system? Like, it seems like there's no way they can. I said, you don't understand. Like, yeah, when the Republicans take control of an institution, they dismantle it to the greatest extent they can get away with it because they don't believe that it should be big or exist. Whereas the other side makes it do more and more and more. And so you're kind of in this

interesting position where anytime you take power, you immediately set about the task of reducing your power. And it'd be like if you're like, oh, I want to become king of this country. The Republican view is like, I did it. I became king. Time to reduce the power of the king and make sure that I can't affect anything. It's a self-defeating thing when you're talking about taking over government agencies. I do want to talk about Arsenal, but last question on the incumbents before I do. I assume that you would have a sort of steel man about them. And I was going to say, what do they get right? And it sounds like you've been, I mean, you're just not a lot. Is there anything that you can say, I guess, in defense of this hundreds of billions of dollars?

No, I think there are some things a place for a handful of things that truly do not benefit from advances in commercial or civilian technology to any great extent. I can speculatively build a new missile and sell it not on a cost plus contract. And I think that's great. I think that's the way it should work. I don't think the government should be taking on all the risk on something like that. But what about an aircraft carrier? I'm not going to speculatively design and build an aircraft carrier in the hopes that the government selects my product, right? It's not feasible. It's too much metal. It's too much stuff. It's too big of a thing. Or like nuclear-powered submarines. If they don't select me, what am I going to do with it? It's illegal for me to sell it to anyone else. I feel like there are these kind of pockets where their business model does make sense and the

incentives maybe don't lead to efficient outcomes, but not everything that you do has to be efficient. Look, I'm a rich guy. I buy lots of meals that are not cost efficient. And that's fine because I have a little bit of money to spare and I can afford to have parts of my life be inefficient if it means that I'm happy and everything works. But you can't run an entire country that way. You can't run an entire military that way. We need to be very efficient on the things that we can be efficient on

so that we can afford to have these cool things like nuclear submarines where they just have to work no matter what, no matter how much they cost, no matter how much they cost, no matter how inefficient it is. So Anduril, uh, sorry, Anduril. I always am doing that old pronunciation. I do Anduril too, man. Let's do it. I feel, I mean, I think it makes me special. And then people, even Trey talks to me like I'm an idiot when I say it. So, okay. But don't, don't, don't, don't, don't listen to Trey. The fight, the fight,

the fight, the fight lives on. Uh, so you guys just raised $1.5 billion. This is your series F, um, led by founders fund where I also work full disclosure. One of the big things that you guys talked about in your press release was arsenal. It's a huge facility to be building. You said tens of thousands of autonomous, um, autonomous systems. I'm assuming that means, well, we'll get into my assumptions in a second. I mean, look, AI fighter jets, AI submarines, anything and everything. Arsenal's reconfigurable to build a whole bunch of different things. But yeah, it's not a factory for one product. It's a factory for a bunch of different products. Why did you say, what does it mean by the systems piece? Tens of thousands of autonomous systems? Or is it just like the userness?

It's like the drone. You could frame it as autonomous weapons, but some of the things are kind of more weapons adjacent than being a weapon directly. So like systems just meaning like chunks of matter. Sometimes they'll be in the shape of an airplane. Sometimes they'll be in the shape of a missile. Sometimes they'll be in the shape of a surveillance tower. But that's why it's systems and not strictly weapons. Well, I want to get into the specifics of how this factory is. It seems so different.

Is it called a factory? Yeah? Yeah, it's a factory. In your press release, you said America would run out of weapons in about three weeks if we went to war. And I think that's a really interesting sort of entrance into the entire discussion of Arsenal. Why is that? That seems pretty shocking. You think that America is the sort of land of unlimited weapons. Can you describe or just explain that a little bit more in depth? We have really limited industrial capacity when it comes to making lots of weapons. The United States has a lot of weapons today that are still critical. They were manufactured in the 1980s and the 1990s, and we just stockpiled them.

stockpiled them. That's why you're hearing about people being pulled out of retirement to restart the Stinger missile and Javelin missile lines. The only people alive who know how to make more of them are in their 70s. It's a crazy situation. Have you seen the Battleship movie? No, with Rihanna. Okay. Well, look, it's's not a good movie but there's a great scene at the end where after the aliens emp all of the modern military ships and fighters and everything and are about to take over the world um a bunch of a bunch of special forces guys go to a nursing home and get a bunch of world war ii veterans to go down to the pier where they have an old World War II era battleship. And then they shovel the coal in and they load up some shells and they go out to fight the aliens at sea with their all analog ship. And that's basically what we're doing.

We're pulling the people out of the nursing homes to remake systems that we haven't made for decades because it's the only thing that we can do. And that is a really big problem. We also are in an era where we're like, we aren't able to make enough solid rocket motors. We can't make enough artillery shells. We can't make enough ammunition. We can't make enough missiles. We can't make enough boats. China has orders of magnitude more shipbuilding capacity than we do. And we also don't have the ability to even make the right types of steel to make some of the types of ships that we need unless we buy that steel from China. I mean, it's a disastrous situation that we've let ourselves get into. It's the downside of transitioning to an information economy and giving away all our manufacturing to China over the course of decades. Yeah,

people imagine we have unlimited weapons. It isn't the case. And the reason people think that, the reason they think that we have this kind of endless capability is because we've been blowing up a bunch of huts in the desert for 20 years. And so we think we're hot shit, but in a real war where you're actually going toe to toe with a great power and you're trading blows and depleting your magazine, we would blow our load that it took decades to build in a matter of days or weeks. And the country is not on a path to solve that. Anderle is trying. not on a, the country is not on a path to solve that. Anderle is trying. So I actually have a bunch of questions here about manufacturing and trade tariffs a bit. I would like to ask you about in one moment, first, just, I would like to drill down a little bit

more on Arsenal itself because you guys have a bunch of facilities. You have facilities in Rhode Island. You have facilities in Georgia. You have, I just learned today, actually the name of it. I knew you had one in Australia. I didn't realize it was called Ghost Shark, which is just incredible. What is different about Arsenal? The thing about Arsenal that makes it different is that each of those other factories is focused on building one system or a family of systems that are all pretty similar, like making a missile and variants of that missile. The difference about Arsenal is that it is millions of square feet into which we're investing hundreds of millions of dollars. And it's a reconfigurable factory that is being designed to share resources between a bunch of different systems. So being able to

share machines, share space, be reconfigured on the fly to ramp up production of one thing as another one scales down. That's not the way that you would typically run a factory, but it's what we're going to have to make happen with Arsenal. So this is why I was reluctant to even call it a factory because while I was researching a little bit about it, I wanted to actually get more information directly from you. I was thinking about Ford and just how, when he was, I mean, people think he invented the car, right? And it's like, he, he didn't, he didn't. Yeah, I know he didn't invent it. He, he popularized it. Right. But it's like, this reminds me of that in

a way it's, if you are, you're building a new, I don't know, it's not just a factory. It's sort of a new way of operating a factory. What it is. And there's a lot of layers to it too. Like the way we would talk about software-defined manufacturing. But thinking about this, where you're trying to automate as much as makes sense and nothing that doesn't make sense. Managing all of the... There's a lot that goes on in a factory

that isn't just the robot arms moving around and welding stuff together. And software ate the world in a lot of other industries. It has not eaten the world in the defense industry because at its core, the defense industry is not rewarded for efficiency. You make more money when things are more expensive and when they take longer and when the parts are more expensive. And so there's not been an incentive for these companies to invest heavily in building the tooling and automation that would allow them to build future systems much more cheaply at a lower upfront cost because nobody's going to pay you for that. But again, Andral was not configured to optimally capture taxpayer money. I'll just be honest.

It's optimally configured to solve the problems the DoD has and build the tools that we actually need. I think Andral could be making more money as a cost plus contractor with a bunch of smart people and smart tooling on the other side to allow us to maximally capture revenue from taxpayers. But I would not be able to convince myself to do something like that. I think we need to prove there's a better way to do this stuff. Because if we can prove it, everyone else is going to get forced to come along with us. That's really the proof of concept we're going for here. Is your sense that you have been proving it to them? Do you think that... I mean, I know when you first started, it was a no, and they're still getting all these huge contracts,

but is your sense that they're afraid a bit at this point? We're proving it up and up and up and up the chain. I think there was a sense of, well, sure, you can do software as a product, but you can't do full systems. And then there was, oh, well, maybe you can do some hardware systems that way. Ghost is cool, Anvil's cool, but maybe companies can speculatively build

their own things, use their own money to decide what works, what doesn't, and then sell it as a product. But you'll never be able to do that with missiles. And then it was, oh, you'll never be able to, you're not going to speculatively build a fighter jet. That's really our bread and butter. And then we beat Lockheed and

Boeing and Northrop on the collaborative combat aircraft selection. And all of a sudden people are realizing, oh, you can do it this way. You can run a company like Androla and you can build not just little tiny software building blocks or little tiny quadcopters. You can build real meaningful systems

with this business model. I think people are starting to realize that. I mean, a big, huge part of the conversation when it comes to arsenal and manufacturing, and we were already getting into it moments ago, is just the fact that America's manufacturing capacity is no, it's no longer there. This, I think, probably the engine of that has been globalism and global trade. We're competing with people who can either, one, just naturally because of lack of labor laws or whatever else, produce things much cheaper than we can produce them here in America. Or two, in cases like China, you have the governments abroad actually subsidizing their industries.

It makes competition incredibly difficult. It's cheaper to build things abroad. That's the high- level problem. I think this brings us to the topic of tariffs. So one of the ways Trump's talked about tariffs for a long time, the economists, I think, tend to hate this idea. Libertarians really hate this idea. It seems that they also tend to strawman it here. They sort of frame the tariffs as a very broad thing. From what I've heard, it seems like the tactics are going to be much more narrow, tariffs in certain situations to achieve whatever aim. I still, though, I think that there's room to disagree on this one. And I'm wondering where you stand on it. How do you think about the tariffs? And how do you think about really the balance between this need for us to bring

manufacturing home and just the fact that it's not affordable? I'm that we talked on the pod. We talked about tick tock. And I pointed out that tick tock should be banned really as a matter of as a matter of, you know, economic trade, like, don economic trade. Don't treat it like a national security issue. Just recognize that we shouldn't allow them to sell stuff to us that we sell to them. On tariffs, I'm the exact opposite. I primarily believe in them as a national security issue. It's so easy to say, well, the libertarian perspective on this is that the most efficient player in the market should be allowed to sell. The problem with that is that you destroy your entire ability to defend yourself. You have no ability to make weapons. And this isn't just the United States.

We're talking about this in the United States because we're in the unenviable position of having a poorly functioning manufacturing apparatus and also being the world police. There are a lot of countries in the world that cannot possibly defend themselves because they have also outsourced all of their manufacturing capacity. It's not just the US that's been hollowed out by China. It's everybody. It's the entire West. And the only reason we have anything left here is because we're the world police and we have some weapons market. There's countries all over Europe that used to be powerhouses. And now the reason they're reliant on us is because they have zero manufacturing capability of any substance at

all. So to me, I think tariffs are great because they ensure there is a market for manufacturing and they ensure there's a market for manufacturing that takes place under U.S. human rights laws, U.S. energy laws. Slavery is really profitable. And so you have a lot of places around the world where you have quasi-slavery or literal slavery making things really, really cheap. And I get this argument in the election year of tariffs are just taxes. You've seen what the Harris campaign is saying. They're saying he's putting a Trump tax on gas, a Trump tax on groceries, a Trump tax on your car. It's like, okay, that's great. But at some point, why make anything right like it probably is cheaper for us to have child slaves in africa make everything for us and uh i mean why would

you want a trump tax on your car when it can be made by child slaves in the congo uh but it's it's it's a it's just this ludicrous political argument when you take it all the way to its libertarian extreme so i i am really enjoying the harris all the way to its libertarian extreme. So I am really enjoying the Harris campaign taking the extremist libertarian position of child slaves making your stuff is okay. I love just calling that an extremist libertarian position because that is what it is. And it's a thing that libertarians refuse to grapple with. It's like you want liberty at home, but not abroad. And clearly, that's what these policies have done is like, as you've said, it's you've sort of enslaved people in foreign countries. And we end up enslaving ourselves in the long run. Like you can say,

oh, I think this thing should always go to the most efficient player. Okay, well, let's play that out 30 years. We now have no ability to make cars, no ability to make batteries or solar panels. Our energy industry, food industry, and automotive industry is owned entirely by our largest strategic adversary, which is also now the world's largest hyperpower. And then they just take Hawaii because there's nothing we can do about it. That's actually the logical outcome of these things if you play it out to the extreme. So we all are relying on, I mean, just a global supply chain, right? There are going to be, I don't know, second order effects perhaps of the tariff system. I'm wondering just what is this sort of tariff policy that you would like to see? What do you think would work here versus what you think would

not work? I'd love for it to be, well, man, everyone wants, this is going to sound so self-serving, right? Because everyone always wants welfare for their thing. The farmers want welfare for corn, and the auto workers want welfare for auto unions. And look at me, the weapons dealer. Surprise, surprise, I want welfare for the defense industry. But what I would love to see is tariffs on things that are directly downstream of strategically important assets. For example, I'm a fan of steel tariffs to the extent that they allow us to maintain some steel industry. And aluminum tariffs that allow us to have some aluminum industry. I'm not saying that we need to make it where you don't have any imported aluminum or any

imported steel, but there's a huge world of difference between allowing there to be some viable US industry and none at all. It's the difference between having, let's say, an aluminum plant that you could ramp up, talent that you could ramp up, and literally no capacity whatsoever. So I would love to see them say, what are the things we can't get along without? We need the ability to make critical metals. We need the ability to feed ourselves. We better make sure that we are not dependent on other people for food, particularly people who hate us. And let's pick these areas and enact tariffs that are sufficient to safeguard those industries.

And then people say, but Palmer, that's protectionist, and then they'll be less efficient. And my argument would be, okay, well, that's why you need to get regulations, get rid of the regulations everywhere else so that you can have lots of competition and there's lots of money to be made. Make it where there's lots of competition in the US, but you don't have to worry about slave-grown strawberries. Put it on your campaign poster. I mean, you're familiar with slavery avocados. slave-grown strawberries. Put it on your campaign poster. You're familiar with slavery avocados. Oh, wait.

Slavery avocados? No. Tell me more about slavery avocados. One of the interesting things that the cartels has been doing over the last couple of decades as the war on drugs has made drugs less and less profitable, as it's become harder for them

to make money on drugs. Drugs getting cheap is actually bad for the cartels. Fentanyl is bad for the cartels. So what they're doing is, there's actually cases where the cartels are going in and taking over avocado farms by force and then

running them without complying with environmental regulations and not paying any taxes. When I say by force, I mean, they're literally making people work these avocado farms at gunpoint and not allowing them to leave to return to their families. And so it's wild to me when, again, you get these extremist libertarians who are like, oh, but we should buy avocados from wherever the cheapest are. You shouldn't have those tariffs. And you know what? I just can't feel that bad about starving the cartels of

revenue from the US that pays for slavery avocados. Yeah. They want to say things like, because obviously the avocados in America are more expensive. That's why we're buying Mexican avocados. And that has to do with tax policy and things like this. And they'll say, well, if we do these tariffs, Americans are going to have to pay $10 for an avocado or something. That's not going to happen because the moment that, you know, Becky comes out of yoga class and has to pay $10 for an avocado is the moment that the policy, the tax policy evaporates. And we once again have a market for avocados in America. Well, and also what happens is eventually you're going to get a, you know, like eventually the guys in El Segundo

are going to start growing avocados. Like if you really get to $10 avocados, you're going to be people building, you know, robot avocado farms. You're going to have to build, like, you get these short-term pain points. Like tariffs are very painful in the short term because they raise prices.

But then people come in and figure out how to do things even better that probably never would have happened had the status quo not been shooken up. It's kind of what we've seen with automation in the food service sector. The minimum wage laws are what's actually driving all of this automation. And I'm not a fan of a minimum wage laws, but I feel like tariffs are something that can drive positive innovation. I want to pivot to one of my favorite punching bags, Google, for just a moment. You have about 200 employees at Google DeepMind signed a pledge or open letter of some kind not to work with the U.S. military. Oh, again?

Yes, exactly. We're back. I was just going to say this is the exact same environment that we were in back when you need to have in your toolbox. Here's an interesting point. You said it's 200 Google employees, right? So remember that the last time this happened, the open letter had 3,000 people on it. I think that's actually probably indicative of the vibe shifts

in a very direct way. And I was saying, even back when there were the 3,000 employees who signed it, I said at the time that it was not as indicative as you might think of anti-military sentiment. Nine out of 10 people in the Valley, I believe, support the idea that the United States should have better weapons than Russia and China. It's not that controversial. should have better weapons than Russia and China. It's not that controversial.

And everyone felt like it was controversial because of that loud minority making a whole bunch of noise about it. And so people would talk to me, they'd be like, hey, Palmer, hey, I like the military, but don't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody. And it was so funny.

Let me invest. Let me invest. Yeah. They thought, like, people really thought it was like this this like contrarian position i'm like guys all of you agree on this you're just you're just allowing yourself to be ruled by this little vocal minority um and also remember a lot of people who signed that 3 000 person google letter many of them were not u.s citizens some of them had literally never been to the united states you had for example one of the guys signing the letter was a marketing manager working out of the Google London office

who's a Chinese national. It's like, oh, Google workers pledge to not support US military. It's like, oh, wow, yeah, this is news. Chinese national doesn't want to work for the US military. What a surprise. Then Chinese national and European, even worse. I think there's been a big vibe. I guess the short version, there's been a big vibe shift.

The fact that we've gone from 3,000 Google employees to 200 employees, I'm surprised they rustled up 200 employees who are willing to be publicly on that side. Now, just on naming the Chinese national component of this story, when you first did, that was a handful of years ago now. You were really attacked in the press pretty brutally for that. Oh yeah, no, Kara Swisher said that she would have rushed the stage

had she been there to hold me to account. It's a real like Twitter tough guy action. Like it's like one step removed from, I would have kicked that guy's ass if he said that to me. It's like, I would have rushed the stage if he tried to get away with saying that in front of me. And all I said was that many of the people are not US nationals. And they're like, that's so racist. Why does it matter if they're US nationals? Because we're talking about the United States military? Jeez. I forgot about that. There was that huge backlash to it.

Well, eight years ago, you were voting for Trump. You were not even doing it publicly. You were supporting him privately. That got out into the news. You were destroyed for it. You lost your job for it. You were demonized throughout the entire industry for it. What do you think about, I mean, eight years later, I mean, Peter experienced something not quite that bad, but also pretty bad for supporting Trump. Right. It's very different now.

And I'm wondering just as someone watching all of this and also participating in it today, how do you feel about or think about the Silicon Valley's apparent tolerance for new Trump supporters or newly public Trump supporters? So once again, two answers. One is I'm actually very sore about it. I'm very bitter about it

because a lot of the people who today are putting out these announcements, they're like, you know what? I am going to support Trump and here's why. And I'm so brave and everyone's giving applause. Many of those same people are the people who are literally calling for me to be fired specifically because of my support for Donald Trump. So I understand that politics is about persuasion. You shouldn't draw battle lines and then say, by the way, I will never accept you to my side. Like you're on the other side and you can never

come to my side or I'll, or I'll slit your throat. Like that, that is not productive politics. However, you can see where someone like me would be a little sore about the people who tried to get me fired now. Uh, I mean, I hate to even bring it up, but you look at a Jason Calacanis type of person. That mold, it frustrates me so. But, on the other hand, you look at...

You can't really blame people. If you look at... Marc Andreessen did an interview back in 2016 or 2017, right around when all the controversy was me was going around. And they asked him about it. And he said that he's one of the most connected people in Silicon Valley, which is not an exaggeration. He knows everybody. And he only knew of two people willing to admit that they supported Donald Trump, me and Peter Thiel. And his point was,

he knows there's more people out there that support Trump and his ideas than two, but that something has gone seriously wrong in America, or at least in the tech industry, where someone as well-connected as Mark is only able to find two people who support the winning candidate for president of the United States. And I think what's happened is there's now so, every person who supports him makes it easier to come out as supporting him. And a lot of people, I'll end with this, they're not so much supporting Trump

as just they feel like they have no choice when put up with an alternative of taxing unrealized gains, destroying the innovation economy, burn not the rich, but the venture-backed specifically. They're like, damn, I guess I shouldn't vote for people who hate me. They finally come around. One sort of fun question. I hope you have an interesting answer to. I'm sure you will. What's taboo today? I mean, Trump was taboo eight years ago. What is the new,

what is the new Trump, if anything, or are we in a post taboo era? Has the vibe shift been that real? Did the heretic kind of at all change the world? I mean, there's, there's a lot of heretical idea. You mean like, are we talking about like in the presidential race or just like generally? Maybe just generally. I mean, what is something that, you know, you're, you think is important right now that you feel is, maybe it's a dangerous question to ask because you did lose your job for it last time. So maybe don't go that hard, but I'm wondering maybe if it don't, if you separate it from you and you just think about it generally, uh, you know, what are some things out there that people are getting attacked for that maybe they shouldn't be? Interesting. So this one's tough because both parties definitely believe things and the people in them believe things that I think are heretical as judged by the other side.

There's very few things that are heretical to both parties. This is going to sound really lame, but kind of the most heretical views are combination views, where you believe a set of things that one side believes and then the other side believes, but they're not the ones that are supposed to blend. I would say like Robert Kennedy. RFK is definitely like, he believes these things are like, for example, he's anti-vaccine in a way that is, I think quite popular with certain elements of the right and certain elements of the left. But,

uh, but it's really just, it's more crazy that he is like pro environment, but anti-vaccine and pro free speech. Like the combination is like water and oil and people, people keep, people can't, can't make something of it. Yeah, but what, I don't know. Does that seem right?

Does that make sense? It does. I mean, those are the people that are seen as apostates and the apostates are always attacked in a way that is vicious beyond recognition. Yeah, but like in terms of like truly like independently heretical ideas, I think there's not that many,

certainly not, that I'd be willing to say. I mean, one I've talked about, like, here's a heretical idea. It's the... Oh, no, this is maybe a pretty good one. There's kind of a heresy around suggesting that we actually... It's like the Democrats are very much kind of anti-conquest, right? They don't believe that

nations that were conquered should remain conquered. They kind of believe in winding back the clock. It's just an argument about how far you should wind back the clock. Lots of people on the left are like, oh my God, Israel stole their land. I'm like, oh, so we should give back Hawaii. They're like, no, not that far. That's coming.

I really believe that Hawaiian independence is coming on the left. So, I mean, you know I've been trying to get some of the Hawaiian nationalists to come to Hereticon and give a talk on this because it is quite heretical. Please introduce me. I've actually been reaching out to some of the Hawaiian nationalists and we've talked about this before. I'm very

fascinated by their argument because it's actually quite like pro-American revolution aligned. Basically, if you tell it from a narrative perspective, it's very clear they're kind of the good guys. Because we're not talking about, for example, the Native Americans. There's lots of arguments. Well, they were murdering people and they were

enslaving people. And there's a lot of bad things going on. The Hawaiians had actually reformed to be a quite modern society. And then we still went in and we rolled them. And so it's very interesting to hear them. They're like, shouldn't people have the right to self-determination? I'm like, yeah. And why should you be ruled by someone thousands of miles away who gives you special rules that don't even apply to them on the continent? I'm like, yeah, that's a pretty good point. But also, I don't want to give up Hawaii, which then boils down to, I've kind of had to come to the conclusion, yeah, the conquered remain conquered. we can't start

trying to rewind the clock on that uh because you have you have you have to pick it up like i think that's probably that's probably pretty heretical that's pretty heretical with the with the mainstream dems like you're right there's people who want to take back israel there's people who want to take back hawaii like would you agree that like that's pretty that's pretty heretical i think it's pretty heretical. It's also adjacent to, I'm calling it moon thesis, which is moon should be a state. I think Greenland should be a state. I think Cuba should be a state. I believe in an expansive America, and I don't actually know where we learned that we should not be expanding anymore. I don't know

when that idea set in America, but but it did it's when manifest destiny became became cancelable like like like if you go to the wikipedia page for manifest destiny like this concept that man is like destined to expand further and conquer you know conquer more of the world and expand westward in particular like uh they're like manifest destiny is a racist pseudo philosophy regarding like what are you talking about? This is the thing that drove the entire American experiment. I agree with you on that. Yeah, we should not stop expanding. But is that heretical? Is it heretical to believe that we should keep expanding? I feel like you'll find a lot of good old boys who agree.

I think that it is pretty heretical. I think that when Greenland was put into the conversation, that was seen as very heretical. I think if I were to say, if Moon should be a state became a more popular idea, I think people would find it very, very heretical. You would see people, Americans, upset about it. I do think the idea of us just expanding is seen as heretical. Oh, here's one. Public executions. People who support public executions. That's pretty heretical. And I'm very pro-public execution.

You jumped right over me, man. I'm into public flogging. Damn, execution. For the humiliation. Yeah, I'm with you there too. But what's interesting is there's kind of arguments from both sides. I mostly hear, like, when I talk to the right, I say, look, like, public executions are what we should do because, you know, it does serve a deterrent effect. Whether you think it's worth it or not, like, that's a question. But one

argument I've been very successful with more left-leaning people is I say, look, don't you think that if the state is going to be executing people, that it should be honest about what it's doing and make it like a public, fully in view thing? Is it really okay to medicalize this procedure and basically say, oh yeah, when you're sentenced to the death penalty, they put you in a chair and a doctor injects you with something and we pretend it's a medical procedure. Shouldn't it be an act of violence that's very clear and explicit? And I find that a lot of people are sympathetic to that argument. But I think, yeah, supporting public execution, pretty heretical. Oh, yeah, I've got two more. I'll throw them out real fast since we're talking about heretical things. 16-year-olds getting married. And I'm not talking about the people who are adults who want to marry 16-year-olds. Should it be okay for people to get married, build a life, build a family before they

get through the state-mandated education system and then this highly socially pushed college education system? You've probably seen the people saying, oh, you shouldn't be allowed to get married until you're 25 when your brain fully develops. And my point is, oh my God, talk about tyranny of low expectations. You realize that America was settled by people who got married when they were teenagers and they settled the entire West. And you're like, oh, that guy over there, he's only 24. You can't really hold him accountable for his actions as an adult. I feel like the infantilization of America is a real problem. But then when you get to the solutions, people don't...

I think that's actually pretty heretical to say the way that you make people responsible is you make them responsible. So I don't know. What do you think? Age of majority at 16? I think it's an all or nothing thing for me. I think it's either we give kids these rights when they're young and it's all of them, including marriage and sex and things like this, or we don't let them vote. But you can't pretend that they're children in every other category

other than voting. I also, I mean, I agree with you about the age thing with americans i mean how old was hamilton or jefferson yeah some of the founding fathers were teenagers when they were when they were fighting in the revolution i mean if you can if you can if you can fight the redcoats as a teenager i i think it's reasonable that you should be able to you know have have have a drink or like there's even boring things. When you're 18, you can't build a house. You can't do it because you're not allowed to sign binding contracts. You can't be legally liable for it. There are things you can't buy. It's not that the government prohibits you. It's that the government, in saying that you are not old enough to sign a binding contract, makes it infeasible for the free market to deal

with you as a fair actor. Yes, a company will sell a 16-year-old a candy bar because the liability is low. They will not sell them structural wood or nails or paint. They're like, oh no. I remember when I was a kid and I tried to buy some paint at the hardware store and they told me I had to be 18. I couldn't believe it. I was just trying to buy it paint at the hardware store and they told me I had to be 18. I couldn't believe it. I was just trying to buy it for some mod retro projects. And I was like, this is fucked. This is crazy.

And maybe I'm also biased because I should have just married my current wife when I was 16 and we've been together since we were 15. I don't know. You can't grow up in this country any faster than the lowest common denominator because it's illegal and that's crazy. Yeah. I think people get really nervous about young people voting, but the real problem is not young people voting. It's that young people stay young until they're like 25 and that's why they vote the way that they do. The way I put it is, the problem isn't young people voting, it's children voting. And there's a lot of 20-year-old

children. And I don't mind adults of any age voting. That seems absolutely fine to me. And the other problem is, it's a little bit of an all or nothing thing where society has to be on board with it. Put another way, it's okay for 16-year-olds to get married if it's okay for 16- year-olds to get married. And if it's not, then it's not. I'm not saying it's healthy for 16-year-olds to get married if it's okay for 16-year-olds to get married. And if it's not, then it's not. I'm not saying it's healthy for 16-year-olds to get married in a world where it's impossible for them to buy anything and the law is against them and they'll be humiliated by society. That probably doesn't work. But I feel like that's pretty heretical. But I feel like that's pretty heretical.

And there was one... Oh, there's one other heretical thing. I'm remembering now. So I've got this policy idea. I call it chain gangs for deadbeat dads. Nobody likes deadbeat dads, right? Like dads who abandon their kids and don't pay their child support. They just abandon them, right? They're the lowest of the low. Did you know that there's, I couldn't believe this. I originally thought how many deadbeat dads could there be in this country?

Like, you know, like a few, there are millions of them. There are millions of men paying no child support for children that they do not take care of. And I feel like everyone universally feels like that's a pretty big problem. I started looking into this because someone posted the 1992 Democratic Party presidential position list. That's right, the party platform. And one of the Democrat party platform bits was that they were going to establish a national paternity testing initiative so that every child in America has established paternity so that the man can be held accountable for taking care of their child. And I was like, wow, that's really based. I can't imagine them. Right.

I couldn't imagine them proposing something like that today. But it got me thinking, what could you do to encourage this? So one of my maybe heretical policy ideas is if you father a kid, you should have three choices. You can either take care of the kid directly, or you can pay a punitive level of child support such that your quality of life with the remaining money is going to be poor, or you will be provided a job on a government chain gang breaking rocks for 18 years. And it would be highly visible. You'd be doing it on the side of the road in view of every young man who will see that as his future

if he does not take responsibility. And I think that would be a really, really powerful thing in terms of promoting responsibility and promoting people to stick it out, even if they don't particularly prefer to. But I think the Democrats are obviously not for this because they have a huge number of voters that are in that category.

And then the Republicans, I think, also know that it's just politically toxic to touch. But I don't know, what do you think? Chain gangs for deadbeat dads? I'm in favor of shame, bringing shame back into culture generally. I think it's an important tool and a shameless society. The stockades, the whipping post.

Well, yeah. I think specifically, we've talked about this on the podcast before, and I got a lot of pushback for it. But I think specifically for things like bridge blocking, which could lead to actual death. We're talking about ambulances and things like this. Sure, sure, sure. There was one ambulance on the bridge. I think it was two protests ago that had an organ in an ambulance. It ended up being fine. But the risk of that is crazy, that you're disrupting an organ. Was this on the Bay Bridge? It was the Bay Bridge. I believe it was the Bay Bridge, but don't quote me on that. It was

one of the two. Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about because I've argued with people about it too. I mean, I've got an idea on this one too, which is blocking a bridge is carjacking and or kidnapping, by the definition. And I think you just need to be really clear. I would love to see the federal government, maybe a new president, step up and say, I'm writing an executive order and federally funded highways, of which there are a lot, if you are a carjacker or a kidnapper on federal property, then you are not allowed to sue anybody for any defensive actions that they might take to protect themselves. And I think that would end the problem very, very, very quickly. Why should someone have to be on a federal highway, federal property, and then be surrounded by people with weapons who destroy their car and at any second could paw them out and kill

them? Why should they have to sit there and just take it? And people say, oh, but Palmer, are you saying that you should be allowed to run over protesters and run over these people who are blocking highways? And I turn it around to them and ask, okay, what percentage chance of death of your child in the backseat are you willing to trade? If you feel that there's a 10% chance that they're going to murder your child, is it okay to run them over? What about a 1% chance? What about a 0.1% chance? And I think most people are not willing to take even a 0.1% chance that they are going to get killed, that their kids are going to get killed, so that people

have the right to block a highway and prevent ambulances from going through. It feels actually like this could be a popular policy. Yes. I mean, I think that you don't even have to go that far. It's just if someone is trying to hold you hostage, what are you allowed to do to stop them from holding you hostage? And I was under the impression it was anything. So what are we doing here? Yep. You just shouldn't be allowed to talk to the rich. The thing is, the issue with this is that it's valid. You could run them over and a viable defense is it was self-defense, but you're still going to get charged. You are going to get charged. You're going to go to court. Your life's going to be ruined. You're going to be in debt millions of

dollars to lawyers. If you can even find someone to take your case, the public defender is going to insist that you just take a plea deal. And so it's one of those things where, yes, in theory, you can defend yourself, but we've seen as a society what happens to the people who do, and as a result, are unwilling to take any action. So that's why I would want an affirmative action to say, hey, I am saying that this is a federal issue and that we are going to preempt. Basically, we're not going to let the state charge you because the feds are going to charge you. And then we're immediately going to dismiss the case because you were clearly defending yourselves. I would love to see something like that proactively. But I don't know. That feels a little heretical in saying it. But on the other hand, I don't know.

I feel like everyone agrees. To borrow a Trumpism, I'm just saying what everyone's thinking. I think it's, yeah, once you break it down, people are on board. You know what? I want to pivot to the media because the media is really where, I mean, all of these ideas, they're going to have a field day with. And before you get into the media, I just got to preempt with anyone who's listening to this for the first time and hasn't heard me talk about this before. Palmer Luckey, Anyone who's listening to this for the first time and hasn't heard me talk about it before, Palmer Luckey, me, was a journalism major. I was the online editor of the Daily 49er, which was one of the largest student papers in the country.

I planned on pursuing a career in technology journalism. So lest anyone think that I'm anti-journalism, anti-press, no, I'm against bad journalism, bad press, and the corruption of the fourth estate. And so I feel like I get... Black people can say things about Black people that white people can't. I can say things about journalists that non-journalists can't say. That's my opinion. Your background in journalism is why I think... I mean, you've always been a big supporter of Pirate Wires. And it's why it means so much to me because you're really coming,

just as I am now as a journalist, you're coming from the inside. Speaking of which, if everyone is listening, I do want one quick shout out for the Pirate Wires Daily. You guys should go subscribe to the Pirate Wires Daily. You can go to piratewires.com, subscribe to it, get three takes a day on the topic at an intersection of politics,

culture, and technology specifically. But now on the topic of media, Palmer, you tweeted, should journalists who prostitute themselves, literally, as in money for sex, to men that consider me their arch rival have to disclose that fact when they report on me. And the choices were either obviously or no. 86% of people voted obviously yes. Journalists who literally prostitute themselves to Palmer Luckey's arch rival should have to disclose that fact when they report on Palmer Luckey. I have a feeling you're not going to be able to disclose much about this, but I would not be a good journalist if I didn't ask you, much about this, but I would not be a good journalist if I didn't ask you, what reporter are you talking about? Well, I'm happy to tell you off of the pod.

I'm holding it a little close right now because it's a serious accusation to levy. I'm not just throwing it out there as a hypothetical. There is someone who is a reporter who has written negative about me on many occasions and who is a reporter for a major outlet who I found out is having sex for money with someone who has considered themselves my arch rival for about 10 years now and hates me and has written also about this topic. And in fact, the reason that he reached out to her is their shared dislike of me. And you may think, oh, that's so cute. He reached out and they developed a relationship. No, his first exchange with her was reaching out to ask how much it would cost to buy sex with her. much it would cost to buy sex with her. And so I'm making sure that I have all my ducks in a row before I make it public because I need to make sure that I've got everything right. But this is not circumstantial. I actually have the emails. I have the entire written record. have the entire written record. I've come into it through a bizarre series of events. And I

kind of tweeted it out without the names attached for a few reasons. One, both of them now know that I know, which puts me in a much more powerful position. And it means that I think both of them will probably cease to engage with me in any negative way. Could you imagine if you knew that I know, and then you were to go out and write another hit piece? So that was part of it. I want people to know. Two, I felt like maybe there'd be people in similar situations, and I want to hear from those people. And I have already heard from people in the same situations. I know it sounds nuts, but there are people out there who are having pieces written about them by journalists who have a history of paid prostitution with people who hate them. And so I'm not saying this is like

an epidemic across the press, but if a reporter is writing about somebody, they're supposed to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest, not just actual conflict, but even the appearance. And then the Society for Professional Journalists says that if a conflict is unavoidable, it must be disclosed at the start of the piece, if it's an unavoidable one. But of course, it feels like if you write about the people that your John hates and complains about, you should have to be like, by the way, I'm being paid by this guy who hates the person I'm writing about. And actually, that was actually how we met because we both hate him and he paid me money for sex because of it. Like, I don't know. I want to discover if this is a real problem. I suspect it's me and a handful of other people,

but it's definitely an artifact of the extremely sex positive, very liberal tech industry. And when all the tech writers are on OnlyFans, I guess this is the natural outcome. Oh, by the way, I will throw out, she does have an OnlyFans. She does have an OnlyFans.

I mean, where there's smoke, there's fire. My point being, it's not like the guy reached out, like, you know, I'm just going to make up, it's not this outlet, but suppose it were the Washington Post. It's not like he emailed her at her Washington Post email. It was like, hey, will you have sex for money? You know, the context was already in a sexually charged context, but it is quite interesting.

Now, I will say, I mean, with the exception of potentially the prostitute in question, the press loves you now, which is a wild, wild change for you. It is very interesting. I would like to know what inspired you to take the Brotopia author, Emily Chang, out on your warship. It seems like a change of heart. And I'm wondering just like, what was your thinking there? Are you perhaps just, I don't know, do you believe in forgiveness and forgetting, moving on? What is going on there? A hundred percent. Well, I mean, look, I mean, I'll even point out like Emily, you know, Emily has even been in, like, I've even given Emily heat in the past and been like, you know, there was that point where she's like, oh, you give so much money to politicians. Why is Andral such a political

company? I was like, you would never ask that question of, say, Mark Zuckerberg or Reed Hastings or any of these other bad people who give far more than I do. This is a one-way question. And the fact that I'm wasting my time talking about it is also even that's negative to me versus talking about my business or what we're doing. And at the end, I said, you would never ask Mark Zuckerberg that question. She says, I might. But which by the way, you'll notice in that same Bloomberg series, she did interview Mark Zuckerberg. You'll notice that she didn't. She did interview Mark Zuckerberg. You'll notice that she didn't.

So that was a, I guess we got the solid confirmation that she mightn't. She might, but she mightn't. Look, I think that I'm trying to take advantage of this moment in time where people seem to broadly understand that national security is important, that China is ascending, and that even if you don't like me,

you can at least recognize that I'm doing things that are good for the United States. And I think this is a good moment for me to reach out through mediums that maybe are to a much broader audience than I typically would have. Like, I want to be on 60 Minutes. I want to be on Bloomberg. I want to be on 60 Minutes. I want to be on Bloomberg. I want to be on CNBC.

I'd be on CNN if they asked me to. And I'm sure part of this is also driven by the fact that the pendulum will swing. A time will come. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what it is, but something's going to happen and the world's going to change and I'm going to be less, I don't know

what you could call it, like less dick than is current. And so I need to take advantage of it. You're very well-liked right now. You're the guy. So you know what's funny? These are two different things. I'd say I'm definitely well-liked. There was, oh, who was it? There was a journalist who wrote on Twitter. He's like, I hate Palmer and everything he stands for. And he's a total American imperialist, blah, blah. And what makes him so dangerous is he seems like such a nice guy.

He's just really affable and well-spoken. He seems like he'd be really fun to hang out with, and it's clear that all his friends, he takes care of them. And that's why I really hate the guy. And like, I think it's pretty funny when you get to the point like even your worst enemies are like, I hate this guy who's all means seems like a really nice guy.

What is the line? I mean, would you forgive any of these people? Are we able to look forward perhaps to an interview with the Washington Post's Taylor Lorenz? combination of crazy and non-preservationist. So I've talked often about how wars are lost, wars are fought when one or both sides misunderstand the outcome, right? If both sides know what the outcome is, the war probably won't be fought because there won't even be resistance in the first place. And the exception to this, I've always pointed out to people, is kind of like the jihadist mentality. Like, I am going to die for my cause. I know I'm going to lose.

And in losing is glorious death. And Taylor Lorenz is a jihadist journalist. Her lack of self-preservation instinct is what makes her so dangerous, because she'll say things and do things that cannot possibly turn out well for her, and are obviously non-risk optimal, but she'll still do it. And I think she sees glory in the jihad. If she is fired by the Washington Post, I think she sees glory in that, even if it ruins her life. And so that's why it's dangerous, I think, to...

I wouldn't do an interview with Taylor Lorenz because I think I could imagine that I do an interview and then she says in an interview, she's like, I remember when I did that interview, Palmer walked me out the door and he said, you fat bitch. Like, and I would be, it would be totally untrue, but then people would be like, oh my God, I can't believe Palmer did that. It's like, I don't even want to put myself like, don't create a situation and there won't be a situation is kind of how I feel about Taylor Lawrence. Yeah. I've been getting that criticism, not criticism. I've been getting that advice

because I've expressed an openness to doing a podcast with her or just doing the podcast. I think it would be pretty funny, but I think you're probably right. You are working on something pretty cool, which I mean, among your many things that you're building, it is a consumer device. It is a new Game Boy. It's the Chromatic. That's right. We talked a little bit about this a few months ago, and I thought it was really cool. We were talking about nostalgia. And I'm wondering, I guess, just first cut on the Chromatic, if you could tell us a little bit about it, but also that there is something just shitty about today's consumer devices. And if so, why? Or is it just we're feeling nostalgic

and that's why we're missing things like the Game Boy? No, I think there are things that have truly been lost. I think that the thing that we've, our games industry has become hyper-optimized around making money. It is not controlled by, like the people who decide what games get made aren't the people who make games or even who people who play games. Like it's a, it's a financialized operation. Uh, it, it, the budgets for these things are so big that you have to kind of cater to the middle of the road. You can't make a thing for an audience anymore. You have to not offend anyone, appeal to everyone. And in making something for everything, you're making some thing for nobody. Uh, I, And I think you see that in the microtransaction takeover.

I think you see that in the push to get away from physical games. And people are like, oh, but it's so much... Digital games are so great because they're better for the environment. Or the companies are pushing them for all these spurious reasons. It really just comes down to, it makes them a few extra points of margin. And they don't care if you can't play the game in 10 years. They don't care if you can't pass it down to your kids. They don't care if you don't get just the inherent joy of getting to interact with the physical manual, the physical poster, the physical cartridge. I mean, there's so many layers to this. So the thing that I'm making,

it's the mod retro chromatic. And it's basically an ultimate tribute to the Nintendo Game Boy. So the world's... If you were to make a Game Boy where money was no object using the absolute latest in technology to perfectly mimic everything about the Game Boy that made it a Game Boy, you'd get the chromatic. So it's got, for example, instead of a plastic screen lens, it's made of lab-grown sapphire crystal.

Instead of a plastic shell, it's a magnesium aluminum alloy shell that's much stiffer, much lighter, much stronger. Instead of having a... Actually, the screen is pretty funny. It's the worst screen probably made in years anywhere in tech. It's a 160 by 144, two and a half inch screen that is exactly the same size, resolution, pixel structure, and even color gamut as the Game Boy Color display. and even color gamut as the Game Boy Color display. And so we had to purposely shitify it in order... We've custom...

The color filters on the LCD are not standard RGB. They're actually copies of the bad color filters that they had to use in the 1990s on the Game Boy Color so that when you play Game Boy Color games, they're actually the right color shade and they're actually the right tone. So you don't have things that should be skin tone being bright yellow, for example.

And it's kind of, the goal here is to, I mean, it is very much a nostalgia play. You want to experience your childhood again. And I won't claim that Chromatic is going to solve the games industry. I'm not saying that Game Boy games are the future of the games industry, but there is a lot that we genuinely have lost in the games industry over, over like the last decade. And it's, it, I mean, you're seeing, I think, I think you're seeing, uh, I think you're seeing even like GameStop capitalize on this.

You know what the biggest GameStop tweet of the last few months has been by a lot? It was right after Microsoft announced they were shutting down the Xbox 360 online store and people were going to lose access to it. They did a tweet

with a picture of a whole bunch of physical games. On one side, it said, it said what you inherited. And it's like a whole bunch of, you know, your like older brother's game console and his Super Nintendo and like piles of physical games.

It says what your kids will inherit. And it's like a bunch of like passwords and a fail to log in notification. And they said, never forget what they took from you. And it got a huge amount of engagement. I think like people are getting it in a way they did not a few years ago. This is a much bigger thing. We were promised on the internet a world that would live forever. And it's turned out to be totally the opposite of that. It's an ephemeral, malleable world that changes in real time

and you lose everything that you have on there. That is a problem in itself. But the bigger problem is that we're losing the analog as well. We abandoned the analog years ago. And I mean, we could talk for hours about this. I do want to focus on just your, on the chromatic for a second.

You were talking before about how these people don't care that you even lose your games or whatever i i'm trying to play pokemon the old red blue pokemon i it's like you have hundreds of dollars to buy a copy of this on amazon and then you have to find a game boy they're not even printed you can't even you can't even buy them online if you want it's crazy they go out of their way to not let you experience this. And, um, what you're talking about, you said, uh, you know, you're doing this, there's like a, the nostalgia is the drive. It's, it's also, it seems like it's love, you know, they're running a business. You actually know it is.

It's a tribute. Like I love the game boy. I love a bunch of those games. I wanted to make the thing that is the ultimate way to play those games. I wanted to make the thing that is the ultimate way to play those. And as you know, we're actually re-releasing a whole bunch of old Game Boy Color games working with the publishers. And the publishers,

it's worth noting, publishers almost, the publishers never manufactured the cartridges. They actually outsourced that to Nintendo. They never had their own manufacturing teams. Nintendo did all of it. And so we're going to them and saying, they would never be able to do this on their own,

but we're going to this and saying, guys, we will literally make new runs of modern physical Game Boy Color games. And a lot of them are really supportive of us. So I'm trying to make it easier for me to relive my childhood, but I also want to make it easier for new generations to experience what was in the past. Because to your point about Pokemon Red

being like hard to go back and play, think how hard it is for a kid today. It's easy for them. If you want to see what books were like 200 years ago, it's easy, right? You can download the book and you can read it. If you want to know what gaming was like 10 years ago, 20 years ago,

you have to be like an expert in technology to track everything down, find a working system. In the case of Pokemon Red and Blue, it probably has a dead save battery by now. And so it won't hold your save games. You have to open it up and actually solder in a new battery. It's kind of crazy how games in particular, their past has become inaccessible. And that has not been the case with movies or music or text. It's like a whole lost generation of experience that nobody can experience anymore. That's, yeah, it's crazy. And it is completely under-discussed. And it needs to be, you know, the gaming piece, again, it's like the gaming thing is part of it, but the broader idea of

just a digital world that we're living through and losing is, it seems like it's one of the most important issues of our generation that we should be talking about every day. And it's like, we never really are. I don't know. How do you think about that? Well, are we going to talk? I mean, Mike, are we going to talk about it in this context? I mean, no disrespect. Let's get stupid.

Let's get stoked. let's get retarded like the like we we like you i've talked we've talked about this before but like we are living in a world where things are just disappearing and history is being rewritten like like it's it's kind of crazy that like the like uh uh you know you have like you have you have an album like elefunk which was an award-winning best-selling album with the song let's get retarded being eliminated from itunes spotify apple music title even if their official youtube channel the wikipedia page has been retitled to let's get it started and there's just like a brief passing mention of an earlier version of the song. Like we're living in a world where there's like history is just being rewritten

and people don't know. And it's being rewritten so that like in this case, it's almost worse than just a game not being available. They're rewriting history because they want to look like they were more palpable to modern taste than they ever were at the time. The whole point was that they're edgy and they're trying to rewrite histories.

No, we weren't edgy, but they still want the popularity today. They're like, no, no, no, we were never actually- They're rewriting the foundation of their success. And I know this seems like a tiny thing and my wife in particular was like, Palmer, nobody cares about Let's Get Retarded. I'm like, you don't get it. You don't understand. Let's Get Retarded is just the one example of a thousand or a million to come where you literally won't know what was true and what happened. You will be unable to experience the past. Or like Disney. Disney edited out on their new release of Lilo and Stitch.

By the way, my favorite Disney movie is Lilo and Stitch. And they edited out a scene where Lilo is hiding in a dryer because like, oh, that might make kids hide in a dryer and then someone might run the dryer and then they'll die. And things like this are just going to keep happening. They're going to rewrite history until there's nothing dangerous and nothing offensive left. And I wouldn't mind that so much if the goalposts weren't always changing.

I'd be okay with a one-time purge. We're going to purge all this crap and we're going to make a little Wikipedia page about everything we purged so that you know what was changed. But that's not how these things go. It never is. For people who are not following and maybe have already had their memory erased, we're talking obviously about the Black Eyed Peas song, Let's Get Retarded, which was changed to Let's...

What was it again? Let's get... What was it? Let's Get It Started. Let's Get It Started. It's interesting that... By the way, it was a clean version of the song that was only developed for the 2004 NBA All-Star Game. So basically they had to make a clean version of the song for was only developed for the 2004 NBA All-Star Game. So basically,

they had to make a clean version of the song for a child-friendly venue, and they put it out there. And what's happening now is years later, they are erasing the original song and pretending that it was always this clean version that was for children at a sporting event. Yeah. The important thing here is not just that there's a clean version, but that when you Google it, the real version doesn't come up. there's a clean version, but that when you Google it, the real version doesn't come up. And that's creepy. You can't experience it.

There's no way. You can't buy it. As you were talking about, you mentioned Lilo and Stitch. I thought of the Mandela effect, which is this new trend. I mean, it's an old concept, but it's a new trend on TikTok is to be talking about the Mandela effect

or on Instagram reels or whatever. And this is when, you know, you have the fruit of the loom thing. Was there a cornucopia or was there not? Matt, you can put up a picture of this thing. I think it's interesting that we're, that this is becoming such a huge trend to talk about the Mandela effect

when we actually have an example of this in real life, sort of all around us, which is the vanishing internet that nobody is talking about. I don't know. I have one last question for you on something about a little more personal, but last thoughts maybe on just the internet. You were talking about leaving something to your kids, which leads into the

next piece. How do you think about maybe rebuilding the technological world in such a way as we don't lose it? Rebuilding the technological world in a way where we don't lose it. Yeah. I mean, that's, I think that you just have to be aware of this when you are building something, right? Like, like I'll use one example, like just self-serving, but for example, the chromatic does not use rechargeable batteries. It uses AA batteries. And then we have a rechargeable battery pack option you can use, but it's always able to accept AA's if you pop it out. And that isn't a nostalgia thing. I'm not doing it because it's retro. I'm doing it because I want this thing to be functional 50 years in the future, 100 years in the future.

If you build batteries into something and you can't replace them easily or at all, you're in here like my phone, it's glued together with adhesive and has a built-in battery. It is going to be unusable in some single digit number of years. And I'm not really a fan of that. That's actually also the reason that Oculus Touch, the controllers that I designed when I was Oculus, they use AA batteries. We didn't use rechargeables because we didn't want to deal with the fact that they were going to become just an unusable thing that doesn't power on anymore and the BMS loses its charge. And now even if you did recharge it or replace it, it doesn't know the charge state well enough to turn on safely. I think batteries are not the end-all be-all, but when you're building something, you have to think, is this something

that will last? Is this something that will survive? And if you don't ask yourself that question, you should expect that it will be lost. And I mean, here's another example. Look at some of the people who have done exclusive podcasts with Spotify. And over time, those podcasts have disappeared one by one. And you have interviews with Alex Jones just disappeared. They're just gone. And if you have an exclusive deal with Spotify, where that's the only place that you can put your podcast out,

you have to accept, you know what? I'm making a trade. I'm making a trade of either money or convenience over the fact that this may not survive. It may not be accessible in the future. And so I wonder if we're going to see people maybe more consciously saying, no, I'm going to do the thing that lasts. I'm going to do the thing that, that, that, that, that endorse. Um, last question in your recent tablet interview, you said having less than 2.1 kids was traitorous to America. Um, I'm wondering how many kids you would like to have?

First question. And then second, go ahead. You have to have at least 2.1 because that's replacement rate. I have one so far. And so, I mean, I know it boils down to three, like hypothetically, I'd be okay with something like you and a group of friends all agree. And like one out of 10 of you has to draw straws. And then like, if you like really formalize it, I'd be like maybe okay with that. But we cannot afford to be a deflating country. And people say, oh, but Palmer, what about immigration?

What about people bringing in? We are responsible for our own fate, right? We cannot outsource our future to the idea that hopefully people will come here forever and it will always be the best place. And then that makes sense. We cannot outsource our stability as a nation. And I'll tell you this, we need a billion Americans because 500 million Americans is not enough to compete with billions of Chinese people or billions of people in India or anywhere else. Eventually, you shrink to being like Motorola. You're a company

that was once large and once important, and now you're economically irrelevant. I see that the future of an America where kids have one kid per couple is the future of Motorola. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a dead brand that technically still exists on paper, but everyone just goes about their day without thinking about this throughout the podcast, what America should be and the problems facing the country and how you're working to protect it and also build a family. Describe the country that your grandkids will be living in if everything goes to plan. Well, look, I like what Ronald Reagan said about being the shining city on the hill, right? It's not just about being good in absolute terms. It's about being a beacon to the rest of the world because I want the rest of the world to look to us and say, that's the best place. That's what I need to be more like. We all need to be more like them, more like that. I'm hoping that my kids are able to grow up in a world where they can make their own decisions. I hope that they're able to grow up in a world where they can say what they believe is true. I hope they don't end up on a deadbeat dad chain gang by my own hand. Wouldn't that be a twist of fate? Oh yeah, he ended up on one of the lucky gangs, famously pushed by Palmer. Yeah, Prop 99, the Chain Gang Act. I hope for all of those things, but maybe this is going to sound too trite. of a vision for America because I think most people actually agree on the things we want, right? Like we want to be able to have families.

We want to be able to entertain ourselves. We want to be able to make cool things. We don't want to be locked up in prison. I'm not one of those people who's like, my vision of America is transhumanist, cyborg hive mind. I'd be pretty fine if the 1960s version of America is the 2060s version of America,

generally in shape and feel. I think that would probably be fine. I'd be okay if a bunch of Apollo astronauts came to the future before I died and said, yeah, this seems pretty good. This seems pretty good. Amazing. Thank you so much. Always good to see you, Mike.